As the field of building and property management continues to grow, so does the need to more effectively and efficiently manage buildings and/or properties and maintenance information and activities. There are many shortcomings associated with current building and/or property maintenance and management activities.
Typically, building managers receive numerous requests for services and/or complaints from the various occupants and/or tenants of the respective buildings and/or properties. Managers may also have to disseminate information to occupants and/or tenants such as by holding public meetings and/or by distributing fliers and other communications. Managers may also, from time to time, obtain information from surveys and questionnaires. Managers must also receive and process maintenance information and/or requests via telephone calls and/or requests which may be left at a central location such as a front desk or other centralized information gathering location.
All of the above activities and related activities result in the need for building and property managers to receive, process, and/or disseminate, a great deal of information in order to effectively and efficiently manage and maintain buildings and/or properties.
The vast amount and variety of information, which can be received from many sources, can prove to be problematical for building or property managers and maintenance personnel to manage. Problems can routinely arise from the inability to obtain, record and store, the information in an organized manner and/or in a manner which can facilitate the effective and/or efficient handling of same and/or for responding thereto. Problems are routinely encountered when management or maintenance departments fail to follow-up on occupant or tenant requests, fail to keep records of same, and/or fail to respond to same. Failing to organize building management and/or maintenance information can also result in a lack of continuity in responding to the needs of occupants and/or tenants in a satisfactory manner.
In today's information and computer age, numerous software products and packages have been developed for assisting managers and maintenance departments in performing certain aspects of their duties. These products and packages, however, appear to be limited to specific and defined applications such as, for example, back office accounting and/or maintenance tracking applications.
Traditionally, software for building management has consisted primarily of accounting and back office applications. These packages have typically focused on the financial and legal aspects of managing properties, such as rent roles and escalations, lease renewals and expirations, and compliance requirements and notifications. Certain maintenance tracking programs have also been available in the marketplace which have either been provided as part of these programs or as stand-alone programs.
These programs have typically been designed and/or have been utilized for internal use as well as for hardwired networks between management and maintenance staff. These prior art technologies have typically been integrated with accounting systems for generating work orders and for approving bills, are usually difficult to operate and typically require the commitment to significant employee training.
The limitations of the prior art systems and technologies are significant, both in terms of the cost of the hardware, software and training, associated therewith as well as in the course of operating the associated system. Typically, all or most of the data entry and related operations must be performed by management staff.
The above-described prior art systems and technologies provide no benefits to residents of these properties or buildings and, further, provide no support for outside vendors or building management individuals and/or entities if these individuals and/or entities are not wired and/or linked into the system. The ultimate beneficiaries of the system, the tenants or residents, can neither enter data into the system nor receive any information from the system.
Various individual buildings or management companies have begun to implement communications systems for their buildings which are accessible over the Internet. Typically, the communications associated with these systems have taken the form of providing an e-mail address, or an e-mail form, on the company web site for submitting items such as a request for maintenance. The e-mail submissions associated with these prior art systems provide for only a minimal convenience over the traditional ways of submitting a maintenance request via phone or fax. These prior art systems also typically provide a one-way communication which terminates upon the message being sent and provide no subsequent benefit to either the tenant, the building manager, or the superintendent, once the message has been received.
In another area of building or property management, it is not uncommon for buildings or managing agents to create or operate web sites for posting certain documents which are typically accessible by respective users. However, these services are typically provided by professional web page designers or posting services which typically require that each document be selected and created specifically for each web posting. In this manner, the documents cannot be easily posted to, modified, and/or deleted from, a web site, especially by building management personnel who have no associated computer or web site training.
The herein-described prior art systems and technologies fail to provide an apparatus or method whereby a building manager can simply add, modify, delete, upload, and/or download, documents, notices, and/or messages, to a web site which is associated with a building or property. Further, the prior art systems and technologies typically fail to provide support for selecting target audiences (tenants, board members, maintenance personnel, front desk personnel, etc.) and, further, fail to provide for e-mail notification when new information may be disseminated from respective information sources which may be of interest to any of the individuals and/or entities which are associated with a building or property.
Prior art systems and technologies also fail to provide for the easy design and distribution of surveys to tenants or residents, and/or fail to provide an efficient platform for allowing building managers to post and collect results from surveys which could typically be provided to board members or other authorized building or property managers.
In view of the foregoing, there appears to be no product, apparatus, or method, for providing a comprehensive means by which to process building and/or property management data and/or information. There also appears to be no product, apparatus or method, for providing an effective interface between occupants and/or tenants and building or property management and/or maintenance departments.